I probably should have written immediately after putting down the phone to capture this, rather than letting the double team of steaming hot tea and the voice of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor return me to something approaching a normal state, but - y'know - blogs are only a reflection of life, not a purpose for it.

The phone call was my brother, and was based - originally - about me trying to talk him into coming down south and travelling to Ross' countryside palatial retreat to engage in the assorted celebration of "Cold-outside! Let's-Fuck!"-children month that's to be held there. But - as conversations tend to when Brother Cheesecake and I get rolling - it wandered.

Which resulted in realising that one of my unquestioned assumptions was groundless.

Unquestioned assumptions are my term for little factlets which you're presented with in Childhood which, in your innocent mind, you accept and never question again. Obvious lies get destroyed quickly just through life. Others, since you don't think of them, can simply be forgotten. The classic is not realising that Lamb is actually Lamb ("They Only Kill The Mommy Lambs," to paraphrase a friend's parents), but everyone has them. And if you don't think you do - well - they're called unquestioned assumptions for a reason.

My one was the face of my blood grandfather.

I knew my genetic descendent died well before I was born, in the second World War. And I - somehow - linked a photo of a man at my gran's house to him. That was what my blood grandfather looked like.

Except it isn't. That was an old man. He died in the second world war. He'd have probably been younger than me.

I have no idea what he looked like.

Hence, strangeness. And even more tellingly, it wasn't even the strangest thing in the conversation.

That was that both Michael and myself have - for some reason - both started to think about him, who he was and how he died in the same time period. The fact that he was home last weekend just allowed him to broach the matter first.